http://www.antiwar.com/orig/hirsch.php?articleid=8206

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December 5, 2005

Chemical Saddam Met
Nuclear Uncle Sam

And we are living with the consequences

by Jorge Hirsch

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Hypothesis: In the 1991 Gulf War, after ejecting Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, the United States was determined to invade Iraq, remove Saddam Hussein from power, and pursue the same goals it is pursuing in Iraq today. It was "deterred" from doing so only because Saddam Hussein had chemical weapons then, deployed and ready to be used against U.S. troops if they had proceeded towards Baghdad.

I argue that this hypothesis provides a rational explanation for many events that the official history does not, and in particular sheds light on the evolution of U.S. nuclear weapons doctrine since then and explains events that are about to unfold in connection with Iran.

The conventional history holds that George H.W. Bush was not interested in invading Iraq to remove Saddam from power. Why not? Saddam was much stronger militarily in 1991 than in 2003, a much larger threat to the region. All the imaginable reasons that could have existed for the invasion in 2003, stated or unstated, were at least as strong in 1991: eliminate Iraq's WMD, bring democracy to Iraq, benefit U.S. corporations, control oil, expand U.S. influence, reduce the threat to Israel. The risks (difficulty to stabilize Iraq, risk of civil war and the breakup of the country, greater regional influence for Iran) were no greater in 1991 than in 2003. The memories of Saddam using WMD against Iran and against its own people were much fresher in the early '90s than they were over a decade later. The U.S. had half a million troops in place the first time around, and was responding to an act of aggression by Saddam. The international community would have been far more supportive of ousting Saddam at the outset of Gulf War I than it was at the beginning of Gulf War II.

After 12 years, Iraq had been substantially weakened by UN sanctions, and UN inspectors had combed the country up and down in search of chemical weapons. Moreover, Saddam had not threatened anyone in the region nor elsewhere in the intervening years. True, 9/11 happened, but there was no evidence that Saddam's regime had any connection, practical or ideological, with al-Qaeda. Why oust Saddam in 2003, rather than 1991?

An explanation based on the personality differences between Bush Jr. and Bush Sr. is conceivable but hardly convincing. There was only one real difference between 1991 and 2003: Saddam had chemical weapons in 1991. In 2003, the U.S. knew, with reasonable to absolute certainty, that there were no "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq that invading U.S. ground troops would have to face.

The conventional view holds that the U.S. made it clear to Saddam in 1991 that it would respond to a chemical attack with nuclear weapons, and this warning was what deterred Saddam from using chemical weapons.

However, chemical weapons were Saddam's weapons of last resort. It was rational for him not to use them to hold on to Kuwait, but he is likely to have been fully prepared to use them if the survival of his regime was at stake, no matter the nuclear threat. Chemical weapons are primarily defensive weapons, and they were used as such by Iraq (successfully) against the counteroffensive that Iran launched into Iraq's territory during the Iran-Iraq war in the '80s.

If U.S. forces had driven toward Baghdad in 1991 and Saddam had used chemical weapons, it would have resulted in thousands of U.S. casualties. Nonetheless, the use of nuclear weapons by the U.S. in such a circumstance would have been condemned by much of the rest of the world as criminal. Memories of Hiroshima were more vivid then, and the world would not have condoned the breaking of the nuclear taboo by an invading superpower against a non-nuclear country. Hence it is more plausible that the U.S. was deterred from invading Iraq by Saddam's chemical weapons than that Saddam was deterred by the nuclear threat from using chemical weapons.

This must have dealt a devastating blow to U.S. policymakers from which they have been attempting to recover ever since. Think about it: the greatest power in the world was prevented from achieving a military goal against a country with negligible military forces, despite the immensely superior conventional and nuclear arsenal of the United States. And Saddam achieving this feat without firing a single shot, so to speak. Whether Saddam explicitly told the U.S. that Iraq would use chemical weapons against invading forces or it was inferred from U.S. intelligence, it must have played a determining role in Bush Sr.'s decision not to march on Baghdad.

Twelve years later, Saddam's removal had been made possible by the success of the UN inspection and disarmament process, not necessitated by its alleged failure.

When Donald Rumsfeld mused in 2003 that U.S. forces would encounter chemical weapons around Tikrit and Baghdad, he was in a time warp. His mind must have flipped back to 1991, when the U.S. was considering going to Baghdad and chemical weapons were indeed deployed surrounding Baghdad as Saddam's ultimate weapon of survival. Dick Cheney was secretary of defense then, and a feeling of impotence about having been "deterred" by Saddam Hussein must have stuck with him. He patiently waited 12 years until he was in a position to complete the mission.

Beginning in 1991, U.S. policymakers and military planners worked hard to modify the rules of the game so that this David-Goliath scenario could never happen again. Here is how:

1. They ensured through UN inspections and sanctions that Iraq got rid of all its WMD so that it would be safe for the U.S. to invade. There is a logical inconsistency otherwise. Iraq did not use chemical or other WMD in invading Kuwait. Even in its war with Iran, it used chemical weapons only for defensive purposes, and the UN did not attempt to impose sanctions against Iraq. Why would the primary UN punishment for Iraq's aggression against Kuwait be that it had to get rid of weapons that played no role in the attack on Kuwait? But it makes perfect sense if chemical weapons did play a key role in the Gulf War, as in the hypothesis considered here.

2. Year after year, U.S. policymakers created and drummed up [.pdf] the mythical concept of WMD, which encompasses chemical and nuclear as well as other unconventional weapons. Nuclear weapons are a million times more powerful than chemical and all other weapons and have the potential to destroy humanity many times over. It is absurd to lump chemical weapons and nuclear weapons in the same category [.pdf]. Nevertheless, the U.S. has been able to convince much of the world, through incessant propaganda since 1991, that chemical and nuclear weapons are comparable. The purpose, of course, is to legitimize answering chemical weapons (which the U.S. doesn't have, or at least doesn't plan to use) with nuclear weapons (which the U.S. does have and does plan to use).

3. The U.S. government worked to strengthen international agreements outlawing chemical and biological but not nuclear weapons (see the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Biological Weapons Convention). This, of course, contradicts the WMD concept and is blatantly hypocritical; nevertheless, the world has accepted it.

4. U.S. military planners lowered the declared threshold for using nuclear weapons. The U.S. now states in policy documents that it will use nuclear weapons against a WMD attack, whether the WMD use was offensive or defensive. Moreover, the U.S. declares that it is prepared to use nuclear weapons against enemy underground facilities and adversaries "intending" to use WMD. It will even use nuclear weapons for "favorable war termination on U.S. terms," no matter what the circumstances.

What a far cry from the times when nukes were weapons "of last resort," to be used only when the survival of the nation or of allied nations was at stake. Today, the U.S. openly advocates using nuclear weapons as a "deterrent" to prevent other countries from doing anything the U.S. opposes that could lead to a conventional war.

But despite all this effort, the Pentagon's latest nuclear deterrence strategy is still an empty threat, and the U.S. government knows it. The problem is candidly stated in the document "Rationale and Requirements for U.S. Nuclear Forces and Arms Control" [.pdf] that served as a blueprint for the official Nuclear Posture Review of 2001:

"Will U.S. conventional and/or nuclear threats be judged credible by foes and prove effective for deterrence? Or will challengers judge the credibility of U.S. deterrence policies to be low? There can be no confident answers to these questions, particularly in today's dynamic unfolding international environment."

Precisely. The much-touted nuclear deterrent is not a credible strategy against "rogue" non-nuclear nations, because nobody believes that the U.S. will use nuclear weapons in the scenarios described in the policy documents. They are just empty words – until the U.S. demonstrates, by doing it once, that it is actually willing to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear countries.

And it is planning to do just that in the upcoming war with Iran. Unlike the attack on Iraq, it will be a purely aerial mission, probably a joint operation with Israel. Given that U.S. forces in Iraq and Israeli citizens will be exposed to Iranian retaliation with chemical missiles, a nuclear attack will be consistent with U.S. doctrine, which makes it "defensible" and even "legal" to use U.S. nuclear weapons preemptively against underground Iranian missile and potential WMD storage facilities.

Once the nuclear threshold has been crossed in an act of aggression against a non-nuclear country, there will be no doubts left about the "deterrent" value of the U.S. nuclear arsenal to deal with any foes for any reasons. "Confident answers" [.pdf] will be possible.

Saddam Hussein wannabes will never again be able to stop a U.S. invasion with the threat of chemical or other non-nuclear weapons. They will be nuked to the ground before they finish uttering any threat.

The trillions of dollars and millions of man-hours invested in building the U.S. nuclear arsenal will never again be proven useless by pitiful adversaries.

North Korea is likely to disarm in the immediate aftermath without extracting any concessions from the U.S.

In the minds of U.S. policymakers, ours will be a safer world. In the minds of rational people, entirely the opposite. The U.S. will have established that the only remaining check on U.S. aggression is nuclear weapons. Many more countries will go nuclear [.pdf], and the risk of global nuclear war will increase exponentially.

And terrorists sympathetic to the victimized country will do their utmost to retaliate in kind, and eventually succeed. Brace yourself.

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"The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country." - J. Robert Oppenheimer

http://lnk.nu/latimes.com/6oy.story

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THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ

Private Security Guards in Iraq Operate With Little Supervision

By T. Christian Miller

Times Staff Writer

December 4, 2005

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BAGHDAD — Private security contractors have been involved in scores of shootings in Iraq, but none have been prosecuted despite findings in at least one fatal case that the men had not followed proper procedures, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Times.

Instead, security contractors suspected of reckless behavior are sent home, sometimes with the knowledge of U.S. officials, raising questions about accountability and stirring fierce resentment among Iraqis.

Thousands of the heavily armed private guards are in Iraq, under contract with the U.S. government and private companies. The conduct of such security personnel has been one of the most controversial issues in the reconstruction of Iraq. Last week, a British newspaper publicized a so-called trophy video that appears to show private contractors in Iraq firing at civilian vehicles as an Elvis song plays in the background.

The contractors function in a legal gray area. Under an order issued by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority that administered Iraq until June 2004, contractors suspected of wrongdoing are to be prosecuted in their home countries. The contractors have immunity from Iraqi courts and have so far not faced American prosecution, giving little recourse to Iraqis seeking justice for wrongful shootings.

"What was my innocent son's crime?" asked Zahra Ridha, the mother of a 19-year-old shot and killed by security contractors in May. "Is this what we deserve?"

Industry officials say some contractors have voluntarily set up compensation programs, but there is no formal system in place, as there is for cases involving American troops.

The U.S. military has a commission that reviews damages claims and makes payments when troops are determined to have erred in opening fire on property or people. American troops suspected of shooting at Iraqis face trial in military tribunals. More than 20 U.S. service members have been accused of crimes leading to the deaths of Iraqis, and at least 10 have been convicted.

A Justice Department official, who asked not to be identified because he was not an authorized spokesman, said the lack of prosecutions of contractors reflected poor oversight by U.S. officials in Iraq, who were under no compulsion to report suspected criminal behavior.

"Any time you get a large group of people together in one place, bad things are going to happen," the official said.

A Times survey of nearly 200 "serious incident" reports filed by private security firms since November 2004 shows that 11% of the incidents involved contractors firing toward civilian vehicles believed to be a threat.

The reports do not indicate whether the shootings were deemed to be justified, and contain limited information about the fate of the vehicle occupants. The reports, filed voluntarily with the Pentagon, say that the contractors received no fire from the vehicles, but shot at them because they were believed to be potential suicide bombers.

About 20% of the reports involved contractors who said they were fired on by U.S. forces in apparent cases of mistaken identity.

Contractors in Iraq frequently travel in unmarked vehicles and do not have reliable communications with military units.

Most of the remaining reports are harrowing accounts of insurgent attacks on contractors that involve roadside bombs, ambushes, rocket-propelled grenades, mortar rounds and machine-gun fire.

The reports, which were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by The Times, represent only a small portion of the serious incidents recorded by the Pentagon since tracking began in 2004.

The Defense Department has denied a Times request to provide the names of the private security contractors in the reports and has yet to release an untold number of additional reports. The Times has filed a federal lawsuit seeking the release of all such reports and security company identities.

The security firms provide armed guards to protect U.S. officials and private contractors working in Iraq.

Although most are paid with government funds, no single U.S. agency regulates them.

Last year, the Pentagon estimated that there were 60 such firms operating in Iraq with about 20,000 employees.

The firms have been awarded at least $766 million in contracts since 2003, according to a recent report by the Government Accountability Office.

At their best, security guards are highly trained former special forces soldiers whose professionalism has saved countless lives. Their presence alleviates the need for additional U.S. forces.

Industry officials defended their record in Iraq. Insurgents frequently strike by driving explosives-packed cars into convoys transporting officials. A security contractor has only seconds to decide whether an approaching vehicle is being driven by an insurgent or an innocent Iraqi, they said.

Security contractors "don't want to shoot innocent people," said Lawrence Peters, the former director of the Private Security Company Assn. of Iraq, an industry group. "But it's a war zone, and mistakes do happen."

At their worst, critics say, the contractors are expensive, reckless mercenaries who complicate the U.S. mission in Iraq. A team of private contractors to protect a single U.S. official can cost upward of $5,000 a day. Security firms operating in Iraq have been cited for fraud and have clashed with U.S. forces.

"The overwhelming number of these [security guards] were highly professional and disciplined," said one U.S. official who worked in Iraq. "But if only 1% of them are bad, you're going to have some nasty characters running around who can do harm."

More than 400 contractors, many of them security guards, have been killed in Iraq, according to the most recent statistics available from the Labor Department.

At the same time, contractors have killed an unknown number of Iraqis in battles with insurgents, road collisions and accidental shootings, according to the records and interviews.

The private guards' sometimes aggressive behavior has created a wellspring of anger at the U.S. presence in Iraq.

Countless Iraqis have had to endure the humiliation of being forced to stop or pull off the road as a convoy of unmarked SUVs races past, filled with men waving guns and making threatening gestures.

"This is not a particularly effective way to win the hearts and minds of Iraqis," said Joshua Schwartz, co-director of George Washington University's government procurement program. "The contractors are making the mission of the U.S. military in Iraq more difficult."

An incident in May is a case in point.

Robert J. Callahan, wrapping up his tour as spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Iraq, was returning to his offices in the U.S.-controlled Green Zone when his convoy turned onto a broad thoroughfare running through Baghdad's Masbah neighborhood, said U.S. officials and Iraqi witnesses interviewed by The Times.

At the same moment, Mohammed Nouri Hattab, 32, was headed north on the road in his Opel. He was moonlighting as a taxi driver, transporting two passengers he had picked up moments earlier.

Hattab looked up and saw a five-car convoy speed out of a side street in front of him.

He was slowing to a stop about 50 feet from the convoy when he heard a burst of gunfire ring out, he said.

Bullets shot through the hood of his Opel, Hattab said, cut into his shoulder and pierced the chest of Yas Ali Mohammed Yassiri, who was in the back seat, killing him. The second passenger escaped without serious injury. The convoy roared on, leaving chaos in its wake.

"There was no warning. It was a sudden attack," said Hattab, a slight man who can no longer freely move his right arm.

Hattab said it was the third time since the U.S. invasion in 2003 that he had been fired on by Americans. On the first two occasions, U.S. troops who had mistakenly fired at him later apologized, he said.

This time, he said, he has drifted in an endless legal fight for compensation, bouncing between Iraqi courts and U.S. officials. Hattab, an Oil Ministry employee now on disability leave, has seen his pay cut in half to $51 a month.

"We thought [the Americans] would bring freedom. They got rid of Saddam," Hattab said. "Now it's going on three years and what? Where is this freedom?"

The family of his passenger, Yassiri, has fared no better. The 19-year-old newlywed, a Shiite from an impoverished neighborhood in Najaf, was on a trip to Baghdad.

Sitting in their two-room home on a dusty, unpaved street, family members said it wasn't until a Times reporter told them that they realized Yassiri had been killed by private guards and not U.S. soldiers, as they had been told.

"We lived in poverty and oppression during the time of Saddam and we were expecting the opposite when he left," said Adil Jasim, 26, a family friend. "I say that the situation is the same and even worse. American forces came to occupy and to achieve their goals. They don't care about Iraqis."

State Department officials did not respond to requests for comment on the incident. But a U.S. official with knowledge of the case said that embassy officials had reviewed the shooting and determined that employees of the security company involved, North Carolina-based Blackwater USA, had not followed proper procedures.

Two employees of the firm were fired, the U.S. official said. Blackwater declined to comment.

A former U.S. official acknowledged that such shootings harmed America's image in Iraq. Still, he said, the Americans must rely on security guards to move around Iraq since the military was focused on fighting insurgents.

"When something like this happens, you alienate people. It's a risk that you have to weigh," said the official, who asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
"There's no good answer."

It is unclear how widespread the problem is. The reports released to The Times are of limited value because the Pentagon released only a sample. Still, they provide a glimpse of the chaos on Iraq's roads. Several reports document traffic collisions with Iraqis who either did not see or ignored security convoys. In one case, a contractor forced a car with an Iraqi man, woman and child off the road. It slammed into a tree. Injuries were unknown.

The convoy "gave very little warning" to the car, said the report by a security contractor who saw the incident. It was "an example of unprofessional operating standards."

Contractors who opened fire on Iraqi vehicles usually did so after the drivers failed to heed warning signs such as a clenched fist, the reports indicate.

In February, a contractor reported opening fire on a black Opel after the driver did not respond to hand signals and a warning shot. The contractors fired 23 rounds from a Russian-made PKM machine gun and nine more shots from an AK-47 into the car.

"We had to open fire directly into that car," wrote the contractor, adding with evident amazement: "Driver of that black Opel survived."

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Times staff writer Borzou Daragahi in Baghdad and special correspondents Saad Fakhrildeen in Najaf and Asmaa Waguih in Baghdad contributed to this report.

Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

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That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of Nations is as shocking as it is true... ~ Thomas Paine

http://lnk.nu/sfgate.com/6p5.cgi

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Has 'War' become a leading brand for United States?

How Bush's imperial policies are being linked to economic woes and CEO angst in America

- Mark Engler

Sunday, December 4, 2005

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We hear a lot about the government largesse flowing toward Halliburton, Bechtel and a handful of other favored firms chosen to rebuild Iraq. Less often do we consider the possibility that the administration's bellicosity has been a major business blunder.

Breaking with the Clinton administration's advocacy for a cooperative, rules-based international economy -- a multilateral order known to critics as corporate globalization -- the Bush administration has fashioned a new model of imperial globalization, aggressive and unilateralist. This agenda, at best, benefits a narrow slice of the American business community and leaves the rest exposed to a world of popular resentment and economic uncertainty.

If Bush is an oil president, he's not a Disney president, nor a Coca-Cola one. If Vice President Dick Cheney is working diligently to help Halliburton rebound, the war he helped lead hasn't worked out nearly so well for Starbucks.

A year ago, Jim Lobe of Inter Press Service reported on a survey of 8,000 international consumers released by Global Market Institute Inc. of Seattle. The survey noted that "one-third of all consumers in Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Russia and the United Kingdom said that U.S. foreign policy, particularly the war on terror and the occupation of Iraq, constituted their strongest impression of the United States."

"Unfortunately, current American foreign policy is viewed by international consumers as a significant negative, when it used to be a positive," said Mitchell Eggers, Global Market's chief operating officer and chief pollster.

Brands the survey identified as particularly at risk included Marlboro, America Online, McDonald's, American Airlines, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, United Airlines, Budweiser, Chrysler, Mattel, Starbucks and General Motors.

In past months, a litany of stories in the financial press featured unnerving questions for business. Typical were the Financial Times in August ("World Turning Its Back on Brand America") and Forbes in September ("Is Brand America In Trouble?").

A U.S. Banker magazine article in August relaying the results of an Edelman Trust Barometer survey found that 41 percent of Canadian opinion leaders were less likely to purchase American products because of Bush administration policies, compared with 56 percent in the United Kingdom, 61 percent in France, 49 percent in Germany and 42 percent in Brazil.

It's not just snooty foreigners who are negative, either. American business leaders have been starting to link economic woes to imperial policy. The U.S. Banker article warned, the "majority of American CEOs, whose firms employ 8 million overseas, are now acknowledging that anti-American sentiment is a problem."

Regularly featured in stories about U.S. image problems is a group of corporate executives who have come together as Business for Diplomatic Action. While avoiding an explicit stance on the Iraq war, the group argues: "The costs associated with rising anti-American sentiment are exponential. From security and economic costs to an erosion in our ability to engender trust around the world and recruit the best and brightest, the U.S. stands to lose its competitive edge if steps are not made toward reversing the negativity associated with America."

Compared with the adverse impacts of Bush's imperial globalization, the administration's efforts at Karen Hughes-style brand rehabilitation are laughable, and Business for Diplomatic Action knows it. Taking diplomatic matters into their own hands, spokesmen for the group flatly state, "Right now, the U.S. government is not a credible messenger."

Is the problem just one of perception, or have the wages of war cut into business profits?

In June 2004, USA Today reporter James Cox wrote about how financially ailing companies are pointing to the war as the culprit: "Hundreds of companies blame the Iraq war for poor financial results in 2003, many warning that continued U.S. military involvement there could harm this year's performance. In recent regulatory filings at the Securities and Exchange Commission, airlines, home builders, broadcasters, mortgage providers, mutual funds and others directly blame the war for lower revenues and profits last year."

Among those complaining was Hewlett-Packard, which claimed that the occupation of Iraq has created uncertainty and hurt its stock price.

While fingering the war might just be a convenient excuse for some underperforming executives, the level of grumbling is noteworthy, as are the comments of outspoken fund managers profiled by Cox. "The war in Iraq created a quagmire for corporations," David Galvan, a portfolio manager for Wayne Hummer Income Fund, says in his letter to shareholders. Vintage Mutual Funds concludes that "the price of these commitments (in Iraq and Afghanistan) may be more than the American public had expected or is willing to tolerate."

In an SEC filing, Domenic Colasacco, manager of the Boston Balanced Fund, calls the U.S. occupation "sad and increasingly risky."

Of course, we know that companies reconstructing Iraq are posting profits. Sales of gas masks and armored Humvees are also up. But such war-supported companies are a small minority.

On the other hand, the diverse businesses in the tourism industry have taken a huge blow. JetBlue, Orbitz, Priceline.com, Morton's steakhouses and Host Marriott, to name just a few, have blamed disappointing returns on the war.

Travel industry leaders have warned that the United States is losing billions of dollars as international tourists are deterred from visiting because of a tarnished image overseas and bureaucratic visa policies.

"It's an economic imperative to address these problems," said Roger Dow, chief executive of the Travel Industry Association of America, tourism's main trade body. He stressed that tourism contributes to a positive perception of the United States. "If we don't address these issues in tourism, the long-term impact for American brands Coca-Cola, General Motors, McDonald's could be very damaging."

The potential costs of war also include the possibility that spreading guerrilla warfare and terrorism will include escalating sabotage against vast and largely indefensible stretches of oil pipeline in the Middle East.

Then there's domestic spending. Whether fiscal conservatives are right that deficits bloated by the Iraq war and tax cuts are necessarily bad for business, or whether Military Keynesianism has actually been helping to soften a periodic economic downturn, the idea of war without sacrifice seems suspect in the long term. Take direct war costs running in the hundreds of billions, add in medical bills for disabled veterans, then throw in the costs of National Guard reservists being pulled from small businesses, and pretty soon you're talking real money.

A year after the election, approval ratings for the victorious president continue to sink to all-time lows, and "staying the course" remains official Washington policy for Iraq.

In this context, it's not surprising that Republican realists like Brent Scowcroft (who warned in a Wall Street Journal essay before the war that "it undoubtedly would be very expensive, with serious consequences for the U.S. and global economy") are making noise again. And it would make perfect sense if an increasing number of those Bush CEOs were by now pining for a return to Clinton- style multilateral globalization of a sort still championed by many Democrats.

Neither of these camps will seem particularly appealing to progressives, but they pose a genuine threat to the imperial globalists who seem incapable of extracting themselves from Iraq. Indeed, intra-party rivalry among the Republicans, which is likely to increase as we enter an election year, could play a vital role in turning White House hawks into dead ducks.

All the better if this transformation is sped by dissatisfaction from corporate leaders re-evaluating the costs of Bush foreign policy and deciding that empire just doesn't pay.

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Mark Engler, a writer based in New York City, is an analyst with Foreign Policy In Focus. A longer version of this article appeared on www. tomdispatch.com.

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"The high stage of world-industrial development in capitalistic production finds expression in the extraordinary technical development and destructiveness of the instruments of war." - Rosa Luxemburg

http://lnk.nu/select.nytimes.com/6p4.html

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December 5, 2005

Op-Ed Columnist

The Joyless Economy

By PAUL KRUGMAN

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Falling gasoline prices have led to some improvement in consumer confidence over the past few weeks. But the public remains deeply unhappy about the state of the economy. According to the latest Gallup poll, 63 percent of Americans rate the economy as only fair or poor, and by 58 to 36 percent people say economic conditions are getting worse, not better.

Yet by some measures, the economy is doing reasonably well. In particular, gross domestic product is rising at a pretty fast clip. So why aren't people pleased with the economy's performance?

Like everything these days, this is a political as well as factual question. The Bush administration seems genuinely puzzled that it isn't getting more credit for what it thinks is a booming economy. So let me be helpful here and explain what's going on.

I could point out that the economic numbers, especially the job numbers, aren't as good as the Bush people imagine. President Bush made an appearance in the Rose Garden to hail the latest jobs report, yet a gain of 215,000 jobs would have been considered nothing special - in fact, a bit subpar - during the Clinton years. And because the average workweek shrank a bit, the total number of hours worked actually fell last month.

But the main explanation for economic discontent is that it's hard to convince people that the economy is booming when they themselves have yet to see any benefits from the supposed boom. Over the last few years G.D.P. growth has been reasonably good, and corporate profits have soared. But that growth has failed to trickle down to most Americans.

Back in August the Census bureau released family income data for 2004. The report, which was overshadowed by Hurricane Katrina, showed a remarkable disconnect between overall economic growth and the economic fortunes of most American families.

It should have been a good year for American families: the economy grew 4.2 percent, its best performance since 1999. Yet most families actually lost economic ground. Real median household income - the income of households in the middle of the income distribution, adjusted for inflation - fell for the fifth year in a row. And one key source of economic insecurity got worse, as the number of Americans without health insurance continued to rise.

We don't have comparable data for 2005 yet, but it's pretty clear that the results will be similar. G.D.P. growth has remained solid, but most families are probably losing ground as their earnings fail to keep up with inflation.

Behind the disconnect between economic growth and family incomes lies the extremely lopsided nature of the economic recovery that officially began in late 2001. The growth in corporate profits has, as I said, been spectacular. Even after adjusting for inflation, profits have risen more than 50 percent since the last quarter of 2001. But real wage and salary income is up less than 7 percent.

There are some wealthy Americans who derive a large share of their income from dividends and capital gains on stocks, and therefore benefit more or less directly from soaring profits. But these people constitute a small minority. For everyone else the sluggish growth in wages is the real story. And much of the wage and salary growth that did take place happened at the high end, in the form of rising payments to executives and other elite employees. Average hourly earnings of nonsupervisory workers, adjusted for inflation, are lower now than when the recovery began.

So there you have it. Americans don't feel good about the economy because it hasn't been good for them. Never mind the G.D.P. numbers: most people are falling behind.

It's much harder to explain why. The disconnect between G.D.P. growth and the economic fortunes of most American families can't be dismissed as a normal occurrence. Wages and median family income often lag behind profits in the early stages of an economic expansion, but not this far behind, and not for so long. Nor, I should say, is there any easy way to place more than a small fraction of the blame on Bush administration policies. At this point the joylessness of the economic expansion for most Americans is a mystery.

What's clear, however, is that advisers who believe that Mr. Bush can repair his political standing by making speeches telling the public how well the economy is doing have misunderstood the situation. The problem isn't that people don't understand how good things are. It's that they know, from personal experience, that things really aren't that good.

* Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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"To be deceived by our enemies or betrayed by our friends in insupportable; yet by ourselves we are often content to be so treated." ~ Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)
French writer & moralist who insisted that self-interest dominates men's actions

http://lnk.nu/observer.guardian.co.uk/6oz.html

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Children die as winter snow sweeps quake valleys

As temperatures plummet in the foothills of the Himalayas, Dan McDougall reports on the misery of Pakistani Kashmir, where cold and disease are multiplying the woes of the disaster's survivors

Sunday December 4, 2005

The Observer

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Looking down from the snowline at dusk, the glow of thousands of campfires emerges across the valley as the temperature plummets, each flicker signifying another homeless family out in the numbing cold.

Along the freezing roads of the Himalayan foothills, 8,000ft above sea level, haulage trucks heave their way around corners, their lights shining on flimsy canvas tents at every turn, illuminating the shadows inside of families around cooking pots, children stamping their feet in the cold, everyone who has one wrapped in a blanket.

Seven weeks after the earthquake on 8 October that devastated this remote region of Pakistan, thousands of victims have still not been reached by the relief effort. Of an estimated three million homeless, only 100,000 are in official government relief camps and, according to the latest United Nations estimates, 800,000 are still sleeping in the open.

On Friday, UN relief official Darren Boisvert warned that 90 per cent of the 420,000 tents handed out in Pakistani Kashmir were no good for winter use, though some people strengthened them with plastic sheets and blankets. His superior, Jan Vandemoortele, UN co-ordinator for Pakistan, went further and described the situation as critical. 'We are on a knife edge in Pakistani Kashmir,' he said, adding that nobody should be carried away by the figures of large donations to help the people of Pakistan. 'Exuberance about donations from the West is deadly. We need more money: we just don't have enough aid and shelter packs to hand out.'

At the end of a treacherous mountain pass, four hours' drive north of the destroyed town of Bagh, in the village of Sundan Gali, people are living out these dire warnings. More than 300 died here on 8 October, including 50 children whose school collapsed. Beyond the rubble-strewn settlement there are only mule trails winding down towards the militarised border that divides Pakistani and Indian-controlled Kashmir. Night temperatures here have reached minus 12 and the fight to survive in the snow has begun.

Smothered in her dead mother's winter chador, six-year-old Samala Jandali sits trembling in the freezing air. Her lips are blue. In a collection of bricks on the muddy floor that straddles the entrance to their canvas tent, her grandmother is burning a putrid mixture of sewage waste, plastic bottles and wood, the only fuel she can muster. Samala rubs the acrid black smoke from her eyes.

The collapsed remains of their home are behind them, covered in snow. The bodies of Samala's parents and two brothers are still in there, beneath the wooden beams and concrete roof that once sheltered a hard-working family. A fortnight ago some neighbours tried using borrowed car jacks to lift the heaviest supports to reach the corpses but gave up within an hour after the weight of one pillar snapped the light machinery in two.

At sunset Samala and her 65-year-old grandmother, Abalnour, huddle under donated blankets, relying on each other's body warmth. The chill jolts the body as you gasp for breath. In the past few nights, along with the early snows and freezing rain, the temperature has dipped to dangerous lows. The heavy shadows under Samala's eyes betray too many nights without sleep. Like most of the elderly survivors, Abalnour wheezes as she goes about her chores. She is already suffering from a respiratory illness, most likely bronchitis, which could lead to pneumonia. With the onset of winter, the World Health Organisation fears that bronchial infections and hypothermia will become commonplace, killing thousands. Last week pneumonia claimed its first six victims here, including a three-month-old baby.

In more built-up areas, water and sanitation systems have been shattered. Some four million people are defecating in the open, prompting warnings of disease as dark rumours of cholera and bubonic plague filter back from remote field hospitals.

'There is no question that many, many people will die here, and children are most vulnerable. We are struggling to cope in our own sleeping bags in these temperatures: it's a battle for survival for some of the aid workers,' says Dagmar Chocholaclova, a Czech doctor in Ratnoi, a village near Bagh. Her clinic has treated hundreds of cases of pneumonia and other acute respiratory infections like bronchitis. 'Last year the area was under 10ft of snow by late December. It can only get worse, it will get worse."

Dr Shazhad Iqbal is holding an X-ray up against the sunlight, examining the outline of a child's leg. It is broken in three places. Alongside him a queue of injured Kashmiris stretches in an untidy line straddling the picturesque plateau where he has set up his outdoor office. Old men lie in the queue on metal beds and rattan cots, surrounded by grumbling relatives who have carried them down the mountain for an official examination.

'It's a difficult process, but a necessary one,' explains Iqbal. 'We are offering the injured compensation but they have to prove their injuries, either under examination or by producing X-rays; many people are faking injuries, so our job is vital.'

Over his shoulder is the line: there are amputees, grandmothers with their heads swathed in crude bandages and dozens of children in plaster casts.

The process is simple enough, he tells me. 'If someone has suffered paralysis or amputation we give them 50,000 rupees (£500), for internal bleeding, fractures and finger amputations, we donate 25,000 rupees (£250), and finally for soft tissue injuries and laceration we offer 15,000 rupees (£150).'

Behind Iqbal is Major Nigel Cribb, the officer commanding the British 59 Commando Engineer Squadron, which has just arrived in Pakistan. He is with his reconnaissance team, deep in conversation. Their green berets stand out against the camouflage whites of the Pakistani army escorting them through the Bagh valley, where the engineers will be based until 18 January, the official pullout date for all non-Pakistani troops.

The presence of marine and army commandos in such a politically sensitive area of Pakistan has led to criticism from hardline Islamists who claim the presence of the British and US forces here represents nothing more than an extension of their activities in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Last week a number of high-profile Pakistani politicians accused President Pervez Musharraf of 'betraying national interest' by letting more foreign forces into the country. 'The presence of such a large number of Nato troops threatens our national security,' said Munawar Hussain, a deputy leader of the hardline Jamaat i-Islami party.

According to Cribb, his men's official role in Pakistan is simply to rebuild schools and patrol remote mountain areas to reach the quake survivors worst affected by the weather. The only weapons they carry are their commando daggers, used for little more than tearing the covers off field rations.

'Criticism of our presence here is not our problem: we are here to do a job.' says Cribb.

'I first came out here three weeks ago on a reconnaissance mission with the Department for International Development, who are funding our secondment here through Nato. In such a cold climate this role naturally fell to us. An integral part of 3 Commando Royal Marines training is Arctic survival.'

The response of groups like Jamaat i-Islami to the British military presence in the heart of Bagh province is of little surprise to many in the military, who know that more than xenophobia and anti-Americanism are at work. Militant groups operating in the area know they have gained immeasurable kudos for their response; it was their vast networks of disciplined cadres that quickly spread out across the devastation to provide food and shelter.

Dawa, which is linked to a militant Islamic organisation, has erected a cluster of tents to provide shelter, along with a mobile hospital. A few kilometres along the road north from Bagh town, where the British engineers are now based, the radical Islamic charity Jamaat-ud-dawa has a camp for about two dozen refugees.

US government officials in Islamabad maintain they want to see the Pakistani military take control of relief, squeezing out all the groups that promote radical brands of Islam. In the battle for hearts and minds, according to one US official in the Pakistani capital, a nation's stability is at stake. 'If militant organisations are seen to be delivering the goods, and the government isn't, it is going to be in trouble - it's not complicated,' he told me.

This belief is reflected in the large boxes of Stars and Stripes branded toys and scarves regularly delivered by US helicopters with aid packages.

Yet with the crisis entering its deadliest phase since the earthquake struck, the Pakistani government is still not able to be choosy about who offers relief assistance.

The militants embedded in the mountains here had a big head start over other relief efforts, deepening the concern that Islamic groups will funnel new followers won by relief efforts into militant activities.

It is perhaps no surprise that it is Nato spearheading the construction of secondary schools amid fears that teenage boys are most at risk from fundamentalists looking to attract recruits.

Jamaat-ud-dawa, for example, has taken to posting huge banners in towns and villages here, advertising the group's successes at the height of the relief operation.

As a result of the under-lying tensions, the com-mandos are playing down their tough reputation: 'We have been discouraged from mentioning our role as commandos so the Pakistani army don't get the jitters about our role here, and we will continue to take that stance, but the men are proud of their presence and the commando dagger patches on their uniforms, so that will be difficult,' said one officer. 'We need to toe a very thin line.'

British marine and army commandos deserve their tough reputation and are trained in extreme survival techniques, spending months above the Arctic Circle. The men here expect to be working in temperatures of minus 20 by the end of the month.

Some are frustrated by the Pakistani-imposed cut-off point for all foreign troops. 'They want us out in six weeks but our reconnaissance missions show there is a great deal of work to be done... The question is, should we leave when the job is only half done?'

With the arrival of the snows in the upper Bagh valley, non-government agencies like the UK-funded Kashmiri International Relief Fund (KIRF) are now beckoning the region's people to desert their ruined homes and move to tent communities at lower altitudes, where the temperatures will be less harsh and assistance easier to come by. But, according to KIRF, most families remain reluctant to leave their home ground because they fear they will lose their land.

'I'm not leaving this place,' says Azaz, camped outside his destroyed home in Sundan Gali. 'How long can I live down there in those tents - one year, maybe two? Then I will only have to come back and start again.'

From the cargo hold of a Pakistani army helicopter, high above Bagh, one can see the valley floors littered with debris from vast landslides, and the collapsed roofs of hundreds of homes, many with bodies still buried inside.

Here and there, beneath the snowline, painted white stones spell out 'H's, where villagers improvised helipads. The helicopters never came. As they always suspected, they will have to rely on their own wits to survive.

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"Help one another, for we are all in the same boat."